So far the launch of the 3DS seems to have gone very well for Nintendo with no real hiccups. But soon after the launch across Europe last week some gamers started reporting a “black screen of death” (BSoD).

The good news is, it isn’t that widespread, the bad news for those suffering the problem is that it’s unclear what is causing it. It has happened while playing several different games and at different screens or states. One player had it happen when viewing an in-game menu, another was playing online, and yet another way just playing a single-player session in one of the affected titles.

The games it has occurred in so far include:

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars

Pilotwings Resort

Super Monkey Ball 3D

Super Street Fighter IV 3D

Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars

There’s also been reports that it happened during use of the Mii applications suggesting this is related to the hardware rather than being a software issue.

Users trying to fix the issue themselves may have found a cure by reformatting the SD card to be FAT-32. Others have just reset the device and carried on playing, but it does recur in some cases. Some gamers could get that to work, though, and a small percentage of 3DS devices have been turned into paperweights and returned to retailers.

The good news is Nintendo can now easily issue updates and patches to all devices so we are sure the issue will be identified and a patch released as soon as possible. What’s surprising is that this only showed up on the European launch, and not the Japanese launch last month.